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Title: M by John Sack ISBN: 0-552-12782-5 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 01 November, 1986 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $10.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: An easily forgettable book
Comment: I thought this was going to be a good book about Vietnam, but, now that I've read it, I can see that my hopes were too high. Did you ever read the beginning of a book and think to yourself, "it'll get going here shortly..."? Usually, when I feel that way, I read a respectable portion of the book and then decide whether to finish it or drop it. With this book, since it was so short, I finished it, but never stopped wondering when it would get going.
I think the author needed to either write a longer book and better develop the characters and story or pare his effort down to a smaller focus on maybe one character. As it is, he produced a not very well developed story populated by not very well developed characters. A formula for a forgettable book, in my opinion. I've read a number of excellent books about Vietnam, but I can't say I'd rate this as one of them. I really can't recommend it.
Rating: 5
Summary: The real deal
Comment: I was there (Ft. Dix Basic Trainee, 9/66-11/66) and Vietnam service (6/68-6/69). This is an excellent, well-written grunt's eye (i.e. worm's eye) of the American Army that fought in Vietnam, who they were, how they did (superbly), and how they fared afterward. A gem.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Seminal Classic of Vietnam War Literature
Comment: Had it not been for an English professor who gave me a battered old 1967 copy of this book, I might never have otherwise heard of it. At the time, it was out of print. I am very happy to see that it is back in print, for it belongs on the shelf with all the other great Vietnam War classics, like _Dispatches_, _A Rumor of War_, _Going After Cacciato_, etc. But whereas those books were published during the late 1970s, and look back at the war through the prism of the American "defeat," _M_ is one of the few good Vietnam books actually written during the war--and early in the war, too (before Tet). Stylistically, the book is in the vein of the non-fiction novel of Capote, Mailer, etc. and probably influenced Herr's writing of _Dispatches_. Sack used the real names of real soldiers in an infantry company called "Mike" (phonetic for "M")--see T. Chorba's review! He followed the company from basic training and AIT at Ft. Dix to its overseas tour in Vietnam.
Reviewers classify this as "reportage" but Sack's writing is rife with the kind of irony, wit, and irreverent humor you'd never find in conventional journalism. Sack pokes fun at army pedagogy, training films, windbag chaplains, inspections, and the ridiculously simplistic anticommunist propaganda of Vietnam era. On a more serious note, _M_ also deals with atrocities by U.S. troops at least a year before Seymour Hersh and the revelation of My Lai, and Sack's prescience regarding the issues and questions that such atrocities would raise in public discourse later on is truly remarkable.
This is "literary" and stylistically interesting writing about the Vietnam War. Essential reading for students of literature on the war, or even for anyone who's ever been in the army and gone through basic training.
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Title: Dispatches by Michael Herr ISBN: 0679735259 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 06 August, 1991 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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